While America is scrambling to respond to living under the rule of the loose cannon (aka Donald J. Trump), local police departments have been quietly stocking up on super spy gear to monitor us.
Last December, The Intercept obtained and published a leaked government catalogue of military-grade surveillance gear used to spy on our cell phones. It may not be too surprising that the feds have Mission Impossible-esque gear to get information, but what’s especially chilling is that local police departments are increasingly gaining access and using these tools — often to violate our civil rights.
But domestically the devices have been used in a way that violates the constitutional rights of citizens, including the Fourth Amendment prohibition on illegal search and seizure, critics like Lynch say. They have regularly been used without warrants, or with warrants that critics call overly broad. Judges and civil liberties groups alike have complained that the devices are used without full disclosure of how they work, even within court proceedings.
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The controversy around cellphone surveillance illustrates the friction that comes with redeploying military combat gear into civilian life. The U.S. government has been using cell-site simulators for at least 20 years, but their use by local law enforcement is a more recent development
And with Trump presenting himself as “law and order” president who hates the “unfair” “anti-police” sentiment, departments will likely have free reign in using these technologies. And experts agree. From The Atlantic's City Lab:
“With 18,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, you know there are going to be many that are just going to jump on the technology bandwagon without regard for civil liberties,” says Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department and now a police reform advocate.
These concerns have taken on a new urgency with the ascension of Donald Trump. The new administration has taken power amid an outbreak of civil resistance in cities nationwide and signs that federal authorities are poised to expand domestic surveillance capabilities. The president has frequently spoken of his plans for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and mass surveillance of Muslim Americans and other domestic targets. Executing those plans would be dramatically helped by harvesting, retaining, and distributing personal information from the electronic devices many of us carry in our pockets. And your local police may already have the tools to do just that.
If you want more information on how you can better secure your information, check out this handy Surveillance Self-Defense guide by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.